Norman Osborn (Earth-21399)
History Early Life Norman Osborn was the son of Amberson Osborn, a wealthy munitions magnate who operated primarily out of New York. After Osborn Industries' business began floundering, Amberson frequently took out his frustrations on his family, instilling into Norman a fear of becoming a failure like his father. Business Career Norman met his wife, Emily Lyman, in college when he was studying chemistry, marrying her after they completed their degrees and later having a son together, whom they named Harry. Around the same time, Norman also met and befriended two classmates: Richard Parker and Curtis Connors. Norman eventually inherited the family company after Amberson's death. Under Norman's leadership, Osborn Industries was rebranded as OsCorp and changed its focus from manufacturing to research and development, with Richard and Connors as his head scientists. Richard and Connors' pet project was Project Moreau, which aimed to take the special abilities of various animals and translate them into solutions to societal problems. Unfortunately, once the military started outsourcing its advanced weapons research to the private sector, Norman started seeing dollar signs and the chance to prove himself better than his father, so he suggested that Project Moreau focus on weapons development - something Richard and Connors vehemently disagreed with. Norman ignored his friends' wishes and ultimately went ahead with weapons development, hiring out Alistair Smythe to be his head engineer. When Norman's two college friends discovered this, Connors was furious and got into an altercation with Norman. Their fight resulted in a laboratory accident that destroyed Connors' right arm. Richard later resigned from OsCorp in protest, taking his research with him. Norman later allowed Connors himself the chance to leave in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement and monetary settlement, to which Connors agreed. Shutting Out At some point, Emily suddenly fell ill with a degenerative condition, with the doctors stating that treatments would only serve to delay the inevitable. Norman, desperate not to lose his wife, hired out a group of his corporate security officers to raid Richard Parker's house for his research, hoping to work on a cure. Unfortunately, their search proved unsuccessful, and forced Richard to attempt to flee the country. When Richard died in a plane crash, Norman assumed he had taken his research with him and gave up on the cure, resolving to live out the rest of his time with Emily as best he could. Emily finally died around the time when Harry was completing middle school. Seeing too much of Emily in his son, Norman sent Harry away to a private school upstate and buried himself in his work with OsCorp, becoming increasingly more sullen and ruthless over time. Controlling New York Without a family to provide emotional stability, Norman's fear of failure manifested itself again - this time as a desire to control all the major industries in New York and ensure he was the most successful businessman in the city. Among his more notable hostile takeovers were those of the aviation engineering firm Bestman Aerodynamics and the R&D startup Horizon Labs. Bestman Aerodynamics Norman Osborn took note of the designs that Bestman put forward while in pursuit of a military contract and felt insulted by the fact that its CEO, a "small-time old man" named Adrian Toomes, could produce such sophisticated technology. Shortly after OsCorp acquired the contract, Osborn reached out directly to Toomes and offered him the chance to merge Bestman Aerodynamics into OsCorp so that both parties could benefit from the contract. Toomes refused because he didn't want to share the credit for his inventions with a man whose lifestyle and ethics he vehemently disliked. Osborn wouldn't take no for an answer, however, and the case ended up going to court. The judge ultimately ruled in favor of OsCorp, resulting in Bestman Aerodynamics being officially merged. As one final insult, Osborn fired Toomes immediately after the merger was complete, leaving Toomes without a steady income. Horizon Labs Norman eventually heard from Curtis Connors again, this time because Connors had founded a new R&D startup called Horizon Labs to continue Richard Parker's work. Norman saw this as a clear violation of their settlement, and began desiring Connors' research in the hopes that he could sell it off as another military contract. To this end, Norman filed an ethics complaint against the startup, citing falsified embezzlement allegations against Connors. The authorities who arrived confiscated numerous pieces of equipment - among them the population of genetically enhanced spiders and Doctor Connors' research notes on a "reptile-based physiological enhancement formula". Shortly after Connors' disappearance, investor confidence in Horizon Labs plummeted to the point where the company was liquidated and its employees were merged into OsCorp, among them an engineering researcher named Otto Octavius. Creating Electro Using Connors' notes and test animals as a jumping-off point, Norman kickstarted a new phase of Project Moreau, turning it into OsCorp's shot at recreating the Super Soldier formula that created Captain America. Despite some promising early results, however, OsCorp's Board of Directors was reluctant to fast-track human trials for fear that if a catastrophic failure occured, it might leak to the press and ruin the company's good image. Although Norman listened to their advice, it bothered him to no end. One of the main branches of the project looked at weaponizing the electrical discharge capability of electric eels. When OsCorp intern Maxwell Dillon discovered the project while snooping around after hours, security guards barged in to take Max away. He panicked and attempted to flee, only to accidentally fall into a tank full of genetically modified electric eels, who zapped him to near-death. OsCorp covered up Max's supposed death by saying he was electrocuted while checking a faulty cable. However, it was later discovered that Max had somehow survived the ordeal and inherited the eels' genetic enhancements, turning him into a living electrical capacitor. Norman considered him Project Moreau's first successful human test subject and kept him around, intending to use Max to power OsCorp's headquarters. When asked why he didn't just kill and dissect Max to advance the project further, Norman stated that, even in his own twisted way, he "cared" about his employees. Creating Doctor Octopus Max's internal power supply turned out to have not been enough to power the OsCorp HQ on its own, so Norman sought out solutions. It was during this time that he discovered Otto Octavius, who was working on a set of mechanical arms to be used for a wide range of civilian applications - construction, hazardous materials handling and as a treatment for people with Parkinson's. Norman saw potential in the arms' military and energy applications and approached Otto, demanding that Otto modify the arms for military use on the promise that he would receive full credit. Otto agreed on the condition that they would be marketed as bomb-disposal equipment rather than weapons. Norman accepted this offer. Otto was so confident in the usability of the arms that he volunteered himself to perform a live demonstration inside OsCorp's testing labs, with Norman and Rosalie among those present. As the experiment began, however, Otto was shocked to discover that the "hazardous energy source" he was set to manipulate was Max. Otto was so horrified by Max's condition that he hesitated, even with Norman egging him on. This hesitation was long enough for Max to regain his strength and break out. In the resulting chaos, Otto's arms were shocked so severely that they were branded into his body, and their erratic spasms accidentally struck Rosalie in the chest, killing her. Traumatized, Otto fled OsCorp's headquarters for the abandoned sections of New York's subway system. As with many incidents before, Norman swept Otto's case under the rug by disavowing him as a charlatan in league with Connors and bent on defrauding OsCorp, while placing the blame for Rosalie's death on Max.Category:Villains Category:Created by N0bodii Category:Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery (Earth-21399) Category:Earth-21399 Category:Villains of Earth-21399